Randy Pausch‘s autographed photo of Captain Kirk, on which William Shatner wrote “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”

In Star Trek, the Kobayashi Maru is a test that puts you up against a no-win scenario.

In this simulation, a civilian ship named the Kobayashi Maru has been disabled by a gravitic mine and is losing life support. If you don’t intervene, the Kobayashi’s 400 passengers will die.

Unfortunately, the Kobayashi lies in the Klingon Neutral Zone. If you attempt a rescue, you’ll be in violation of the treaty, which will cause the Klingons to take hostile action.

If you try to save the Kobayashi, three Klingon ships move in on you. They refuse to communicate, and they start firing. You’re outnumbered, and the computer is allowed to cheat, so there is no option but to lose.

The point of the test is not to win, but to behave well in the face of certain destruction.

How do you face a situation that you know you can’t win?

There’s a psychological concept known as “learned helplessness.” It refers to when a person or an animal learns that it’s helpless, so it stops trying, even after the situation changes.

In a 1960s experiment that I hope to God would be illegal today, learned helplessness was observed in dogs by subjecting them to electric shocks.

Two dogs were kept in separate rooms, but wired to the same electrical circuit. When the electricity was turned on, the first dog was able to press a lever that would turn it off for both dogs. The second dog didn’t have access to the lever, and from his perspective the shocks just stopped at a random time (since he didn’t know the first dog controlled it).

Although both dogs experienced the exact same electrical shocks, the first dog learned that he had the power to stop them, while the second dog learned that he was helpless. The dog in control quickly recovered, while the helpless dog become chronically depressed. In further experiments, the dogs that had learned helplessness were subjected to shocks that they were free to run away from, but they didn’t try.

But wait, it gets worse. It’s somewhat understandable for the dogs to think that because they couldn’t stop the shocks in the first experiment, they couldn’t stop them in the second. But in another set of experiments, dogs were temporarily paralyzed with a drug before being shocked. Obviously, they couldn’t even try to escape the shocks. By the time they regained their mobility, they had learned they were helpless. They didn’t try to escape the shocks, even though they had never tried before.

Here’s the silver lining: not all dogs acted this way. A third of them, the optimistic ones, did not become helpless. They still tried to escape the shocks and did, despite having failed before.

I’m not sure how the Star Trek cadets were supposed to behave in the Kobayashi Maru simulation, but I guess it was along the lines of staying focused and trying everything possible. And some cadets tried some unexpected solutions, with varying degrees of success.

- On his third attempt, James T. Kirk cheated by reprogramming the simulator to make it possible to rescue the Kobayashi, saying he didn’t believe in the no-win scenario. (In one movie he was awarded a commendation for original thinking, but in another he was put on trial for cheating.)

- Chekov evacuated his ship before crashing it into the three Klingon ships. (However, this meant that the Kobayashi was not saved.)

- Sulu realized it was a trap, and didn’t cross into the Neutral Zone. (Again, this meant the Kobayashi was not saved.)

- Scotty used a bunch of crazy tactics that let him bypass the Klingon shields and beam destructive items to them. While this worked at first, the simulator kept adding more and more Klingon ships, finally beating Scotty with 15 ships. (Because Scotty knew that his techniques would work in the simulator but not the real world, he was judged unsuitable for command track and reassigned to engineering.)

- Piper used a bunch of unorthodox commands that tricked the computer into fighting itself, which ended up crashing the simulator. (Her instructors acknowledged that it might have worked in the real world.)

- Peter David made the bizarre move of destroying the Kobayashi, figuring that (1) a rescue attempt could not succeed, (2) destroying the Kobayashi was more humane than letting the crew be captured and tortured, and (3) the Kobayashi may actually have been a setup planted by the enemy.

- Peter Kirk (James’ nephew) faced a different version of the simulation, in which the enemies were the Romulans instead of the Klingons. He invoked an obscure Romulan law that allowed him to challenge the Romulan commander to a one-on-one fight to the death, during which all ships must cease fire. Before beaming over for the duel, he told his people to beam aboard the Kobayashi survivors and escape, leaving him to die. (The instructor stopped the simulation at this point, but Peter was credited with a nearly perfect outcome, sacrificing himself but saving the Kobayashi and his own ship. The simulator was reprogrammed to prevent this solution from being used again.)

Every now and then, you may face a situation that seems unwinnable. And maybe it is. But don’t give more power to it than you have to. Don’t be too quick to declare it as unwinnable, when there may be a solution you haven’t thought of yet.

And if you really can’t win, doing your best anyway will keep you away from the trap of learned helplessness for the future. Besides, you can always change your definition of “winning.”

I’ve never been much of a Star Trek fan, but I went to see it because everyone seems to like it. Yes, it’s good. And in addition to being good sci-fi, it also carries some important life lessons. (Contains spoilers.)

1. Being different isn’t a bad thing.

The young Spock, being half human and half Vulcan, is a child of two worlds, and doesn’t appear to belong in either one. He’s not accepted by the other kids, and even adults speak of his heritage as a disadvantage. In time though, he makes his own path, finding a huge asset in the combination of Vulcan logic and human emotion.

Do you ever assume that being different is a bad thing?

2. Find a balance between the extremes.

At first, Kirk overindulges his reckless nature with nearly disastrous results, while Spock completely shuts off his emotions and follows the rules to a life he doesn’t want. Eventually, they settle on more moderate personalities. Not exactly in the middle, but at a point where they can avoid most of the consequences of the extremes while still being themselves.

Do you have a tendency to be too extreme in any aspect of your personality?

3. Anyone can be worth listening to.

As the fleet responded to a Vulcan distress call, Kirk connected the dots and realized it was a trap. He tried to warn the crew, who wouldn’t even hear him out at first. After all, he had been suspended, and he was regarded as a loose cannon. Still, he was the only one who knew all the relevant information, and because the crew finally decided to listen, they were prepared for the trap.

Do you ever ignore potentially good advice because of your personal bias?

4. Anyone can make a difference.

George Kirk was captain of the U.S.S. Kelvin for only 12 minutes. But he spent those 12 minutes evacuating the crew and sacrificing himself to save 800 lives.

Are you capable of doing more than you give yourself credit for?

5. Revenge is a dish best not served at all.

The saying “revenge is a dish best served cold” is said to be a Klingon proverb. It means that revenge is more likely to succeed when carefully planned out (cold-blooded) as opposed to being hasty and emotional (hot-blooded).

That might be true, but why not skip revenge altogether? It rarely works out to your benefit. Did Captain Nero really need to sit around doing nothing for 20 years, waiting for Spock to emerge from the black hole? That’s a long time to stay mad at someone, especially someone who didn’t intentionally do anything wrong.

Are there any grudges you can drop today?

6. Don’t play with red matter.

Red matter is a substance that ignites to create a black hole. Spock used it to contain a supernova that would have destroyed the galaxy, so this is dangerous stuff. Apparently, Nero forgot that part when he fired on Spock’s ship. Metaphorically, playing with red matter is doing something that can potentially work, but isn’t worth the risk.

Do you ever try to succeed at any cost, regardless of the consequences?

7. Extreme situations call for extreme measures.

When the Enterprise’s engines weren’t powerful enough to escape from the black hole’s gravitational field, Kirk went with Scotty’s idea of ejecting the warp drive reactor cores and exploding them to propel the ship forward. It was a risk – they could have blown themselves up, or the explosion could have done nothing but destroy their warp capability. But since full speed ahead wasn’t enough, they had to try something.

Have you ever ruled out a risky but feasible option, while clinging to something that wasn’t working?

8. There’s no such thing as a no-win scenario.

Kirk took a test that was designed to be a no-win scenario. It’s a simulation in which no matter what you do, your ship is destroyed. The point of the test is to judge your response to the fear of certain death.

On his third attempt, Kirk beat the no-win scenario by altering the simulator’s programming. He was accused of cheating and missing the whole point of the test, to which he responded that he doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario.

The no-win scenario really doesn’t exist, although you may have to reconsider your definition of “winning.”

Are you facing any scenarios you consider to be “no-win?” Are you sure that’s an accurate perception?

(Randy Pausch, a life-long Star Trek fan, received an autographed picture of William Shatner, on which Shatner wrote “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” Randy makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo appearance early in the movie as a crew member on the Kelvin, with the line “Captain, we have a visual.”)